The Last Night--Farewell Hotel Waverley--Friends Old and New--What
followed the Marriage of La Tour le Borgne--Invasion of Col. Church.
Faint nebulous spots in the air, little red disks in a halo of fog,
acquaint us that there are gas-lights this night in the streets of
Halifax. Something new, I take it, this illumination? Carbonated hydrogen
is a novelty as yet in Chebucto. But in this soft and pleasant atmosphere,
I cannot but feel some regret at leaving my old quarters in the Hotel
Waverley. If I feel how much there is to welcome me elsewhere, yet I do
not forsake this queer old city--these strange, dingy, weather-beaten
streets, without reluctance; and chiefly I feel that now I must separate
from some old friends, and from some new ones too, whom I can ill spare.
And if any of these should ever read this little book, I trust they will
not think the less of me because of it. If the salient features of the
province have sometimes appeared to me, a stranger, a trifle distorted,
it may be that my own stand-point is defective. And so farewell! To-morrow
I shall draw nearer homeward, by Windsor and the shores of the Gasperau,
by Grand-Pre and the Basin of Minas. Candles, Henry! and books!
The marriage of La Tour to the widow of his deceased rival, for a time
enabled that brave young adventurer to remain in quiet possession of the
territory. But to the Catholic Court of France, a suspected although not
an avowed Protestant, in commission, was an object of distrust. No matter
what might have been his former services, indeed, his defence of Cape
Sable had saved the French possessions from the encroachments of the
Sterling patent, yet he was heretic to the true faith, and therefore
defenceless in an important point against the attacks of an enemy. Such a
one was La Tour le Borgne, who professed to be a creditor of D'Aulney, and
pressing his suit with all the ardor of bigotry and rapacity, easily
succeeded in "obtaining a decree by which he was authorized to enter upon
the possessions of his _deceased debtor_!" But the adherents of Charles
Etienne did not readily yield to the new adventurer. They had tasted the
sweets of religious liberty, and were not disposed to come within the
arbitrary yoke without a struggle. Disregarding the "decree," they stood
out manfully against the forces of Le Borgne. Again were Catholic French
and Protestant French cannon pointed against each other in unhappy Acadia.
But fort after fort fell beneath the new claimant's superior artillery,
until La Tour le Borgne himself was met by a counter-force of bigotry,
before which his own was as chaff to the fanning-mill. The man of England,
Oliver Cromwell, had his little claim, too, in Acadia. Against his forces
both the French commanders made but ineffectual resistance. Acadia for the
third time fell into the hands of the English.
Now in the history of the world there is nothing more patent than this:
that persecution in the name of religion, is only a ring of calamities,
which ends sooner or later where it began. And this portion of its history
can be cited as an example. Charles Etienne de la Tour, alienated by the
unjust treatment of his countrymen, decided to accept the protection of
his national enemy. As the heir of Sir Claude de la Tour, he laid claim to
the Sterling grants (which it will be remembered had been ceded to his
father by Sir William Alexander after the unsuccessful attack upon Cape
Sable,) and in conjunction with two English Puritans obtained a new patent
for Acadia from the Protector, under the great seal, with the title of Sir
Charles La Tour. Then Sir Thomas Temple (one of the partners in the
Cromwell patent) purchased the interest of Charles Etienne in Acadia. Then
came the restoration, and again Acadia was restored to France by Charles
II. in 1668. But Sir Thomas having embarked all his fortune in the
enterprise, was not disposed to submit to the arbitrary disposal of his
property by this treaty; and therefore endeavored to evade its articles by
making a distinction between such parts of the province as were supposed
to constitute Acadia proper, and the other portions of the territory
comprehended under the title of Nova Scotia. "This distinction being
deemed frivolous," Sir Thomas was ordered to obey the letter of the
treaty, and accordingly the _whole of Nova Scotia_ was delivered up to the
Chevalier de Grande Fontaine. During twenty years succeeding this event,
Acadia enjoyed comparative repose, subject only to occasional visits of
filibusters. At the expiration of that time, a more serious invasion was
meditated. Under the command of Sir William Phipps, a native of New
England, three ships, with transports and soldiers, appeared before Port
Royal, and demanded an unconditional surrender. Although the fort was
poorly garrisoned, this was refused by Manivel, the French governor, but
finally terms of capitulation were agreed upon: these were, that the
French troops should be allowed to retain their arms and baggage, and be
carried to Quebec; that the inhabitants should be maintained in the
peaceable possession of their property, and in the exercise of their
religion; and that the honor of the women should be observed. Sir William
agreed to the conditions, but declined signing the articles, pompously
intimating that the "word of a general was a better security than any
document whatever." The French governor, deceived by this specious parade
of language, took the New England filibuster at his word, and formally
surrendered the keys of the fortress, according to the verbal contract.
Again was poor Acadia the victim of her perfidious enemy. Sir William,
disregarding the terms of the capitulation, and the "word of a general,"
violated the articles he had pledged his honor to maintain, disarmed and
imprisoned the soldiers, sacked the churches, and gave the place up to all
the ruthless cruelties and violences of a general pillage. Not only this,
the too credulous Governor, Manivel, was himself imprisoned, plundered of
money and clothes, and carried off on board the conqueror's frigate, with
many of his unfortunate companions, to view the further spoliations of his
countrymen. Many a peaceful Acadian village expired in flames during that
coasting expedition, and to add to the miseries of the defenceless
Acadians, two _piratical_ vessels followed in the wake of the pious Sir
William, and set fire to the houses, slaughtered the cattle, hanged the
inhabitants, and deliberately burned up one whole family, whom they had
shut in a dwelling-house for that purpose.
Soon after this, Sir William was rewarded with the governorship of New
England, as Argall had been with that of Virginia, nearly a century
before.
Now let it be remembered that in these expeditions, very little, if any,
attempt was made by the invaders to colonize or reside on the lands they
were so ready to lay waste and destroy. The mind of the species "Puritan,"
by rigid discipline hardened against all frivolous amusements, and
insensible to the charms of the drama, and the splendors of the mimic
spectacle, with its hollow shows of buckram, tinsel, and pasteboard, seems
to have been peculiarly fitted to enjoy these more substantial
enterprises, which, owing to the defenceless condition of the French
province, must have appeared to the rigid Dudleys and Endicotts merely as
a series of light and elegant pastimes.
Scarcely had Sir William Phipps returned to Boston, when the Chevalier
Villabon came from France with troops and implements of war. On his
arrival, he found the British flag flying at Port Royal, unsupported by
an English garrison. It was immediately lowered from the flag-staff, the
white flag of Louis substituted, and once more Acadia was under the
dominion of her parental government.
Villabon, in a series of petty skirmishes, soon recovered the rest of the
territory, which was only occupied at a few points by feeble New England
garrisons, and, in conjunction with a force of Abenaqui Indians, laid
siege to the fort at Pemaquid, on the Penobscot, and captured it. In this
affair, as we have seen, the famous Baron Castine was engaged.
The capture of the fort at Pemaquid, led to a train of reprisals,
conspicuous in which was an actor in the theatre of events who heretofore
had not appeared upon the Acadian stage. This was Col. Church, a
celebrated bushwhacker and Indian-fighter, of memorable account in the
King Philip war.
In order to estimate truly the condition of the respective parties, we
must remember the severe iron and gunpowder nature of the Puritan of New
England, his prejudices, his dyspepsia; his high-peaked hat and ruff; his
troublesome conscience and catarrh; his natural antipathies to Papists and
Indians, from having been scalped by one, and roasted by both; his
English insolence; and his religious bias, at once tyrannic and
territorial.
Then, on the other, we must call to view the simple Acadian peasant,
Papist or Protestant, just as it happened; ignorant of the great events of
the world; a mere offshoot of rural Normandy; without a thought of other
possessions than those he might reclaim from the sea by his dykes;
credulous, pure-minded, patient of injuries; that like the swallow in the
spring, thrice built the nest, and when again it was destroyed,
----"found the ruin wrought,
But, not cast down, forth from the place it flew,
And with its mate fresh earth and grasses brought,
And built the nest anew."
Against such people, the expedition of Col. Church, fresh from the
slaughter of Pequod wars, bent its merciless energies. Regardless of the
facts that the people were non-resistants; that the expeditions of the
French had been only feeble retaliations of great injuries; and always by
levies from the mother country, and not from the colonists; that Villabon,
at the capture of Pemaquid, had generously saved the lives of the soldiers
in the garrison from the fury of the Mic-Macs, who had just grounds of
retribution for the massacres which had marked the former inroads of
these ruthless invaders; the wrath of the Pilgrim Fathers fell upon the
unfortunate Acadians as though they had been a nation of Sepoys.[D]
[D] One incident will suffice to show the character of these forays. A
small island on Passamaquoddy Bay was invaded by the forces under Col.
Church, at night. The inhabitants made no resistance. All gave up;
"but," says Church in his dispatch to the governor, "looking over a
little run, I saw something look black just by me: stopped and heard a
talking; stepped over and saw a little hut, or wigwam, with a crowd of
people round about it, which was contrary to my former directions. I
asked them what they were doing? They replied, 'there were some of the
enemy in a house, and would not come out.' I asked what house? They
said, 'a bark house' I hastily bid them pull it down, _and knock them on
the head, never asking whether they were French or Indians, they being
all enemies alike to me_." Such was the merciless character of these
early expeditions to peaceful Acadia.
"Herod of Galilee's babe-butchering deed
Lives not on history's blushing page alone;
Our skies, it seems, have seen like victims bleed,
And our own Ramahs echoed groan for groan;
The fiends of France, whose cruelties decreed
Those dexterous drownings in the Loire and Rhone,
Were, at their worst, but copyists, second-hand,
Of our shrined, sainted sires, the Plymouth Pilgrim band."
One of the severest cruelties practised upon these inoffensive people, was
that of requiring them to betray their friends, the Indians, under the
heaviest penalties. In Acadia, the red and the white man were as brothers;
no treachery, no broken faith, no over-reaching policy had severed the
slightest fibre of good fellowship on either side. But the Abenaqui race
was a warlike people. At the first invasion, under Argall, the red man had
seen with surprise a mere handful of white men disputing for a territory
to which neither could offer a claim; so vast as to make either occupation
or control by the adventurers ridiculous; and therefore, with good-natured
zeal, he had hastened to put an end to the quarrel, as though the white
people had only been fractious but not irreconcilable kinsmen. But as the
power of New England advanced more and more in Acadia, the first generous
desire of the red man had merged into suspicion, and finally hatred of the
peaked hat and ruff of Plymouth. In all his dealings with the Acadians,
the Indian had found only unimpeachable faith and honor; but with the
colonist of Massachusetts, there had been nothing but over-reaching and
treachery: intercourse with the first had not led to a scratch, or a
single drop of blood; while on the other hand a bounty of "one hundred
pounds was offered for each male of their tribe if over twelve years of
age, if scalped; one hundred and five pounds if taken prisoner; fifty
pounds for each _woman and child scalped_, and fifty pounds when brought
in alive."
The Abenaqui tribes therefore, first, to avenge the injuries of their
unresisting friends, the Acadians, and after to avenge their own, waged
war upon the invaders with all the severities of an aggrieved and
barbarous people. And, as I have said before, the severest cruelty
inflicted upon the Acadian colonist, was to oblige him to betray his best
friend and protector, the painted heathen, with whom he struck hands and
plighted faith. To the honor of these colonists, be it said, that although
they saw their long years' labor of dykes broken down, the sea sweeping
over their farms, the fire rolling about their homesteads, their cattle
and sheep destroyed, their effects plundered, and wanton and nameless
outrages committed by the English and Yankee soldiery, yet in no instance
did they purchase indemnity from these, by betraying a single Indian.